Ron Swarner

Editor

Recent Articles

When I am dead and gone, I hope to be incinerated and have my ashes scattered in a greenside bunker on whatever my favorite golf course is at the time. Then, whenever someone's ball lands in the bunker and he or she has to blast out of it, it's possible

Ten years ago, Justin Johnson's mentor at REI posted a trip on the company's breakroom wall. Not just any trip. A perfect trip, one that Johnson could name drop during his full-time gig outfitting campers with tents, stoves and dehydrated food. Paul Dornish's idea? Cross the greater Arctic National Wildlife

When talking with Deadbeat Olympia owner and booker Brandon Rowley, he said that he once met with a 70-year-old Olympia lifer who imparted some wisdom: "Every day should be Record Store Day."
Record Store Day is a fundamentally confounding tradition. Just like every other new holiday, Record Store

For its 50th anniversary Tacoma Community College features works by current and former art instructors and alumni, and it's one of the better shows I've seen there in quite some time.
Entering the gallery, you're faced with a wall of circular shapes in shades of white and brown

Pasties, butt cheeks and hip-hop Toto return to Tacoma as the Gritty City Sirens' Adventures in Oz, a Wizard of Oz-inspired burlesque production, returns to the Temple Theater Ballroom. This Tacoma makeover of L. Frank Baum's classic may be campy, but it still follows the famous Dorothy down the Yellow Brick Road

So you walk through the grocery store, and you look at the big, shiny red apples, and you feel hungry. Then you notice just how big and red and shiny they all are. You get all suspicious and start remembering things about pesticides and growing seasons, and all of a

One of my favorite Far Side cartoons, by Gary Larson, depicts a pair of grizzled cowboys sitting around a campfire at dusk. One is handing the other a cup. The caption reads, "More cappuccino, Raoul?" Yes, times have changed. Campfire and simple cuisine continues to evolve. Bayview School of Cooking

Aaron Lewis has dropped a few things in his life. The Staind frontman and lyrical mastermind dropped the "e," which was kinda radical. Whether it made sense or not, the tattooed titans of mope metal motored their angsty album 4 Shades of Grey and its hebetic headbangin' hit "Price to

When I'm dead and gone, I hope to be incinerated and have my ashes scattered in a greenside bunker on whatever my favorite golf course is at the time. Then, whenever someone's ball lands in the bunker and he or she has to blast out of it, it's possible that

I knew the traditional fifth anniversary gift was the astoundingly lame "wood," and, of course, the 25th anniversary is the silver and 50th golden. We're pretty sure the 75th is either oxygen tanks or pre-chewed food. Apparently, the first anniversary is the kickass music anniversary, because downtown Olympia music and

Recent Blog Posts

Some historians estimate that man has been brewing beer for more than 8,000 years. Anthropologists have even speculated that bearded Neolithic man made the transition from a nomadic to sedentary existence in order to cultivate grain for brewing beer. The beer served as an important nutritional supplement to an otherwise

Technically, Wingman Brewers produced its first batch of beer in 2007. "The first batch of beer I ever made was a five gallon batch of beer with my fellow Wingman Derrick Moyer. We got the itch for brewing then and opened our business with a one barrel of 31-gallon batch

Last Friday, Redhook Brewery tour guide and comedian Ben led me through Redhook's Woodinville plant and many beers. We chatted about my first Ballard Bitter in 1984, Redhook's innovative brewer Nick Crandall's pilot brew program, the brewery's history and one too many pirate jokes. If you've never toured the brewery,

Lacey, Washington is still hugging it out with Top Rung Brewing Co. A year ago, Thurston County firefighters Casey Sobol and Jason Stoltz opened their brewery in Lacey's Hawks Prairie neighborhood.
Over the course of the year, the brewery released 11 beers from their initial three - Hosechaser, Irons IPA and

After three weeks of voting the Weekly Volcano readers have picked the most popular mac and cheese joint in the South Sound.
Yesterday's Tournament of Mac and Cheese Championship matched the romantic downtown Tacoma spot Over The Moon Cafe against the Narrows waterfront restaurant Boathouse 19. It was a battle that

MONDAY, APRIL 6: CHAMPIONSHIP GAME >>>
The titanic mac and cheese throwdown finale in on! Voting for the 2015 Weekly Volcano Tournament of Mac and Cheese Readers' Poll Championship Game is live.
After three weeks of voting, you have picked the most popular mac and cheese joints in the South Sound area.

SATIUDAY, APRIL 4: TWO LEFT BUBBLING >>>
Over the past three weeks, the Weekly Volcano challenged 64 of the South Sound's best mac and cheese serving joints to go elbow-to-elbow in a showdown of culinary combat. Some fell easily by the wayside, either faltered due to inferior skills or simply because

FRIDAY, APRIL 3: FINAL FOUR >>>
And then there were four. ...
Believe it or not, fine readers, there have been days during the Tournament of Mac and Cheese when, by noon or so, it was already obvious which mac and cheese-serving restaurants would be moving on and which would be going

THURSDAY, APRIL 2: BAKED EIGHT GAMES >>>
The Baked Eight is fully fleshed out: eight establishments that - according to our readers' votes - serve the best mac and cheese in the South Sound.
Yes, only eight out of an original 64 mac and cheese joints remain, each going to battle today

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 1: CHEESY 16 GAMES >>>
The best mac and cheese in the South Sound? You think you know where to find it. We all do. After weeks of feverish voting (and with the help of a complicated computer program stolen from cavemen) we at the Weekly Volcano World Headquarters

Recently Reviewed Movies

In today's world it is understood we will all die knowing something about science. We won't necessarily learn practical or prosaic things like the reproductive cycle of butterflies and moths or the genus and species names of fungus and bacterium. In the age of high technology, industry and information, from

As a former subscriber to the Film Movement, an organization dedicated to bringing obscure foreign films to the attention of sloths and the disorganized masses, I appreciate subtitles. (Sometimes I wonder why British sitcoms don't have them, since I typically only caught one in every 12 of the insults